Sinter Plant

The sinter shop has two sections: charge preparation and sinter baking. 

The charge preparation section includes a crane trestle accommodating two electric bridge grabbing cranes, eight charge bunkers, a four-roll crusher of low-mesh coke, eight dosing plants for the collecting belt conveyor, a mixing drum, and an inclined charge feed conveyor. 

The sinter baking section includes a sinter hopper, a sinter machine feeder, a fixed grizzly grate, and a sinter intake trench. 
The purchased scale is usually delivered by the suppliers via the Ministry of Railways railroad transport to the Chusovoy station. 
The Ministry of Railways cars loaded with scale are taken from the Chusovoy station to the sinter plant by railroad transport (diesel locomotives) to be unloaded by railway grabbing cranes at the outside storage. 

The local scale is delivered from the automotive spring and roll-mill shops by motor and railroad transport of the local pool. 
The lime-rock from the mining shop is delivered by motor and railroad transport and unloaded at the outside storage. 
The blast-furnace dust, low-mesh coke, and Dorra sludge from the blast furnaces are delivered in local cars by railroad transport.  Chemical waste from the ferroalloy production operation is delivered to the grabbing crane area by motor transport. 
The scale and lime-rock are delivered from the outside storage to the sinter plant by the local pool cars. 
Electric bridge grabbing cranes are used to feed sinter production charge materials to the bunkers. 

Table 1 – Main Process Equipment Specifications 

General

The blast-furnace operation is an initial link in the production cycle of finished rolled products and ferrovanadium. 

The blast-furnace plant was set up in 1894.  A 114 m³ blast furnace was blown in on July 12. 

The factory’s blast-furnace operation has two blast furnaces: blast furnace No. 1 commissioned on August 28, 1937, with a working volume of 225 m³ and maximum operating capacity of 540 t/d and blast furnace No. 2 commissioned on August 10, 1960, with a working volume of 1,033 m³ and operating capacity of 2,150 t/d. 

The agglomerate section has a sintering area of 16.5 m³ and an output of up to 150 kt/a.  Casting machine No. 1 commissioned in 1943 has an output of 1,000 t/d.  Casting machine No. 2 commissioned in 1984 has an output of 700 t/d.  Casting machine No. 3 commissioned in 2002 has an output of 2,400 t/d. 

Coke for blast furnace operation is supplied by OAO Gubakhinskiy Coke. 

The Kachkanar agglomerate, pellets, and the Gubakhinskiy coke are raw materials for 225 m³ blast furnace No. 1.  Natural gas is blown into the blast-furnace hearth at a rate of 1,200 m³/hr.  The smelting products are discharged into 50 t hot-metal transfer ladles and 11 m³ and 16 m³ slag cars.  The furnace has bucket charging.  Electric locomotives deliver the buckets with charge materials and coke by narrow gauge tracks to the area designated for crane lifting onto the furnace mouth. 

Blast furnace No. 2 has a volume of 1,033 m3 and elevated gas pressure under the mouth.  The charge is made up of the Kachkanar pellets and sinter, locally produced sinter, ferroalloy production waste, and cast iron chips.  OAO Gubakhinskiy Coke provides supplies for this blast furnace. 

The blast furnace plant is one of the metallurgical enterprise’s key workshops.  Iron smelting in the blast furnaces is a starting stage of the metallurgical production operation. 

Operation in the blast-furnace plant is continuous and the plant is a leader in a closed-cycle factory system because, in addition to cast iron, it produces blast-furnace gas used as fuel by other workshops. 

Currently, the blast-furnace plant has two blast furnaces with an aggregate volume of 1,258 m³ (Table 1).

Table 1 – CMW Blast Furnace Specifications

Paramter	BF No.1	BF No.2
Year commissioned	1894	1943
Working volume as on 01.01.2003	225	1033
Number of blower nozzles	8	14
Number of iron tapholes	1	1
Early slag recovery	None	None
Number of cast houses	1	1
Iron casting method	Fixed troughs	Fixed troughs and 1 crossover trough
Slag casting method	Fixed troughs with casting into ladle	Fixed troughs with casting into ladle
Mix used to close iron tapholes	Water	Water, waterless
Charge delivery to skip pit method	-	40 t scale car
Furnace loading method	Bucket	Skip
Charging device type	Double-cone without CPP	Double-cone with CPP
Automatic control and adjustment of feed coke weight by moisture content	-	Applied
Cooling: shaft, shoulders, hearth, tuyere region	Process water	Process water
Oxygen enrichment	None	Applied
Natural gas applied	Applied	Applied

Flast Furnace No. 2: Air Heater Specifications